Frye Art Museum UX Study

UX • Data Visualization

Internal staff booklet visualizing and presenting all data to the FRYE Art Museum.

The Frye Art Museum is a multifaceted space for art, education, life enrichment, education, and community. Through its many programs, exhibitions, and offerings the museum has the ability to reach an increasingly diverse and engaged audience. The Frye’s website is a key access point for users to interact and connect to the museum’s many opportunities.

Since the launch of the Frye’s new website in August 2015 there has been no formal analysis of the success and challenges to user engagement on the website. Hannah and I saw an opportunity to support the efforts of the communications team through a thorough website usability study. It became clear that if we analysed and identifed the most pressing challenges to engagement on the website then we could create a more dynamic and fuctional web experience for our members and visitors.

Our workflow consisted of gaining as much research on the website and it’s usability as possible. Conducting internal staff interviews, online surveys, studying google analytics, and in-person usability tests were all part of the process to identify success and problem areas of the website.

The book’s presentation of data starts with an introduction and thank you, and then the pages of the findings from the internal staff survey. There are 12 departments, in which the staff uses the website for different reasons. They also hear first hand about visitors experiences and difficulties with the website.

Another part of the beginning process was to identify the user groups of the museum, and what their intention and end goal is by using the website.

We found potential areas for growth, and patterns and re-occuring problems areas from the staff surveys. From this we were able to pinpoint four areas of the website to focus our study on. They are Exhibition/Talks+Tours, Registration, Plan and Event, and Volunteer pages.

With these four areas in mind, Hannah and I did a thorough site audit, going through the task flows, keeping in mind usability heuristics and noting areas of the site that could be improved.

A large part of the study was user testing and Google Anayltics. We defined 2-3 tasks for each area of our study, creating a user-scenario. In total we gathered 18 unique in-person usability tests, using quicktime screen recordings, and one of us taking notes and observing the participant in what steps they took to complete each task.

After analysing the observation notes and going through the screen/audio recordings, we mapped them out into task flows for presentation. The red indicates the user took the wrong steps and went off track of the task. Green means they took the right steps in completing the task.

For each page of the website we were focusing our study on, we dove deep into Google Analytics to gain an understanding of where are users were coming from, devices they used to access the website, and how they got to the website. There were 8 anaylitics areas we took data from and created pie charts to display that data.

Membership surveys and a usability survey were sent out to the Frye email list, as well as social media. This helped to gather information about the demographics of patrons, and what they were interested in.

See The Process

Writing everything down, making lists, and sketching was a huge part of our process. We first defined a loose outline of the project, writing down potential sections we would focus on.

We looked at UX processes and studies online to help us understand the information we needed to prepare.

For each page of the website we were focusing our study on, we dove deep into Google Analytics to gain an understanding of where are users were coming from, devices they used to access the website, and how they got to the website. There were 8 anaylitcs areas we took data from and created pie charts to display that data.

Membership surveys and a usability survey were sent out to the Frye email list, as well as social media. This helped to gather information about the demographics of patrons, and what they were interested in.

We created a set of tasks and scenarios for each user test. Hannah and I traded roles each time, with one of us introducing the scenario and providing support, and the other would observe and take notes.

We set up our station in an area of the Museum, with an iPad, iPhone, and laptop. Depending on the participant, we would have them use one of the three devices, and explained their scenario. We gathered 18 user studies, with ages ranging from 18-70.

After our user testing was complete, we wrote down all of the information. We also went over the screen recordings and compared them with observation notes.

Once everything was down on paper, we put the information into our booklet. Each user task is displayed in a flow, with red and green indicators of successes and failures. Observations and key take aways are also noted on each page.

When all of our research was finally complete, we made a huge list of the layout of our book. This was a great way to get a visual of the flow and layout.

The final book ended up with 53 pages of data for the Frye Art Museum to use as an internal resource.